Samantha Apanasewicz
Pop Trends Columnist
“The Game of Loans is rigged, and not in your favor. But if you’re smart about your choices, you can beat the odds.” – Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director of Turning Point USA.
We all have heard about the hit TV show “Game of Thrones.” Cutthroat killings and the warring of opposing powers makes for an amazingly thrilling concept for entertainment. However, this basic ideal of deceit and being taken advantage of does not only reside on our devices anymore.
The “Game of Loans,” as political activist Charlie Kirk defines, is a game the federal government plays on young people, especially college students, every day.
Government establishments, usually exclusively politicians themselves, fool students into thinking that by providing ever-increasing loans to cover ever-increasing tuition costs, they have earned the votes of young people come election time. And unfortunately for the rest of us, most of the time they are correct. It is because of the politicians’ promise of more and more financial aid that college tuition became so expensive in the first place.
According to Bloomberg News, the cost of a college education has increased over 1000% since 1978, way past the feeble 265% inflation rate of the same time period. This is proof that the government has essentially handcrafted a monopoly for itself in the case of student loans, preying on the fact that the youth will continue to buy into the system.
The government is happy to give loans because it alone collects the interest. This ensures that the government receives more than it gives all of the time. Therefore, all these student loans give colleges no incentive to cut costs and gives every incentive to raise costs because it means more money for the college budget.
This system of money distribution would make more sense for education programs that promote entry into fields with high employment rates. In these scenarios, the humongous debt accrued would be more easily paid.
However, the most common majors of college students are in the social sciences and communications. These programs have very high unemployment rates, meaning they do not support student loan debt.
Mainstream colleges are no longer primarily about preparing you for a career. They are more focused on creating political activists, extreme tolerance advocates and hating the core values upon which America was founded. If college did not cost so much, the parties might be worth it.
The average student debt is $28,400 per borrower, not graduate. A large chunk of the trillion-dollar student loan liability is held by ex-students who never even graduated. Not only did they help fund a politician’s summer home, but they did not even complete an education with that money they still had to pay back. Out of 100 students to enter college, only about 59 leave with a degree, on average.
Mike Rowe from the TV show “Dirty Jobs” summarizes the issue nicely: “We are lending money we don’t have, to kids who can’t pay it back, to train them for jobs that no longer exist.”
To sum it up, student loans are not free money. You must pay it back because it is a federal loan, even if you declare bankruptcy. And whenever politicians say they want to make college “more affordable,” they are saying they want to get the vote of the youth while making it easier to dig themselves into a hole.
They do not have the youth’s best interests at heart. It is only their own interest at heart that matters: getting elected in order to be put in a place of power.